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Robert Cook-Deegan’s Viewers’ Guide To the Super Bowl of Gene Patent Cases 2

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Does Myriad have rights to BRCA2?

The race to find mutations associated with inherited risk of breast cancer started with Mary-Claire King’s announcement of linkage to chromosome 17 in fall 1990. As Kevin Davies documented in his book Breakthrough, it is widely accepted that the team led by Mark Skolnick of the University of Utah and Myriad Genetics won that race to find BRCA1. They cloned and sequenced the gene and identified the first high-risk variants several months ahead of King and other rival groups in the UK, France and the United States. Utah/Myriad filed the first patent applications on BRCA1.

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